| Ryan International Group of Institutions | |
| Motto: | "Excellence in Education & All Round Development" |
| Schooltype: | Private, co-education |
| Religion: | Christianity |
| Founder: | Dr. Augustine Francis Pinto |
| Chairman: | Dr. Augustine F. Pinto |
| Head: | Ryan Pinto |
| Head Label: | CEO |
| Ratio: | 42:1 |
| Director: | Dr. Snehal Pinto and Dr. Sonal Pinto |
| Campus Director: | Grace Pinto |
Ryan International Schools are a group of private educational institutions in India and other countries. The group was founded in 1976 by Dr. Augustine Francis Pinto under FLDS. The Ryan Group started its first school in Mumbai in 1976 and currently has more than 135 schools in India and other countries including significant locations in Maharashtra, Delhi-NCR, and Karnataka.[1] The group collaborates with universities in the US to facilitate learning across global boundaries.[2]
The Ryan International Group of Institutions (RIGI) has a centralized command over all of its schools, does not follow a franchisee model, and is India's largest private-sector school chain. According to a report by News 18 in September 2017, the group employs over 18,000 faculty members and over 30,000 students pass from Ryan schools annually. Students of Ryan International Schools are commonly known as "Ryanites."[3]
In the initial attempts to set up an English-medium school for the middle class in Mumbai, Dr. Pinto, the founder-promoter and chairman of RIGI, set up a small school in 1974 that failed to take off. However, he and Grace Albuquerque, a teacher at that time, eventually established St. Xavier's High School in Borivali East, a Mumbai suburb, with the help of Anthony Silva Pinto, the new head of OLPS School, Chembur. This endeavor with The Silva Pintos has led to a long-lasting bond between the two families.[4] [5] Pinto is criticized as "missionary" for his promotion of Christianity in schools.
Ryan International School, Kharghar under ICSE affiliations. Ms. Alice Vaz is the principal of the school.
Ryan International School has two schools in Malad under CBSE and ICSE affiliations. The ICSE school in Malad was awarded the Quality School Governance Accreditation by the National Accreditation Board for Education and Training in 2014. Sonal Naik is the principal of the school.[6]
Ryan International School Greater Noida was established in 2003 and had 3,200 students as of 2019.[7]
Ryan International Group follows CBSE, ICSE, SSC-HSC, and IGCSE (A & O Level), International Baccalaureate (IB) - Primary Years Programme (PYP) in different schools under its umbrella. In 2019, students of Ryan International Group secured top ranks at the district, school and national levels in both the ICSE and CBSE formats.[8]
Many of the branches of the school have received scathing reviews by parents on mouthshut.com,[9] in relation to allegedly bad teaching staff present at these branches.
The schools in Sharjah, Sanpada, Mangaluru, Bengaluru, and Abu Dhabi have adopted the Tata ClassEdge technology.[10]
The school holds a yearly International Children's Festival of Performing Arts.[20] The 14th occurrence of this event was held in January 2016 in Mumbai with the theme 'Celebrating Diversity.' The event attracted over 40,000 students including notable individuals from India and 17 different countries.[21] [22] [23]
The school has been accused of tax evasion by means of 'trusts' that students' parents have been asked to pay on various occasions. In February 2007, parents filed a complaint against RIS, Ludhiana for fraudulently collecting around Rs 4 crore from them by way of donations (over and above roughly Rs 10 crore for tuition and admission fees).[24]
The founders have been accused of money laundering by investing in a dubious finance company and manipulating its share price illegally.[25]
Even with fee hikes at Ryan International Schools, the faculty requires parents of the students to pay additional money for extra curricular that were allegedly already included in school fees.Students of the Schools face poor hygiene conditions at school with stinky, unusable washrooms and no clean drinking water in many of the branches of the ‘sparkling’ Ryan schools such as Sector 40 in Gurugram, Kundalahall.[26] The above complaint, filed in 2016 by a group of concerned parents on the Consumer Complaint forum, goes on: “Condition of classrooms is also not good. Furniture is not polished and walls have not been painted for a long time. In front of all school gates, water gathers in the rainy season because of poor drainage... At the time of dispersal, kids walk through the water, and their shoes and socks get wet. Sometimes small kids fall in water and get hurt because they are unaware of potholes.”
"During snacks and lunch breaks, (there is) no water. Toilets stink. Explanation by supervisor: How can the school provide water for so many children? Ayyammas are busy."[27]
In September 2017, A complaint was filed about the Sanpada branch alleging the under-maintained water coolers and the 'Stinking Toilets'.
Ryan International School has a history of Corporal Punishments and Physical abuse of students on a daily basis by the school faculty.On 28 September 2017, a class 4 student at Ryan International School, Ludhiana was allegedly slapped repeatedly and beaten with sticks on his arms, legs and back by two teachers after he got into a fight with another student.[28] A week before that, at the Bannerghatta branch in Bangalore, a teacher was fired after he repeatedly caned a class 9 student for talking in class, to the extent that the child had to be hospitalized for fluid coagulation in the areas where he was hit.[29] In October 2011, a Physical Education teacher at Ryan International School, Ludhiana lost his cool and picked up a wooden desk to hurl at parents when a Parent-Teacher meeting got heated.[30]
"When I was in 2nd standard, a teacher [...] slapped me so hard that my cheek was swollen and I had to stay under medication because my gums started to get numb; all because my dad had written a letter to her asking why she wasn’t teaching properly." [9]
On 8 September 2017, Pradyuman Thakur, a student at the Ryan International School in Gurugram, was murdered. The killing was planned by a class 11 student in order to postpone exams and parent-teacher meetings.[31] Other students of the same school and their parents told that violence and bullying are common at the school[32] and that school authorities act to hide the incidents rather than take steps to control them.[33] After this murder case the principal, Neerja Batra, was suspended and there was a case filed against Ryan Group and Pinto family.[34]
This section contains only alumni for whom there is a Wikipedia article.